Good O' Boy Roundup Report - March, 1996

10.1989

In this year we first received numerous allegations of racist conduct. Approximately 550 persons attended some portion of the Roundup in 1989. [ / Based on attendee estimates and records of registrations in prior and subsequent years, we would estimate that approximately 350 people actually registered to attend the 1989 Roundup and approximately 50 local law enforcement and 100 to 150 or so "guests" stopped into the campground during some portion of the Roundup. As this was prior to the institution of the wristband system which significantly improved methods for keeping out non-paying guests, it is likely that the numbers of "guests," or more likely, "party crashers," may have been at the higher end of that range. ] Of these, we have identified 275 and interviewed 124, including 5 DOJ employees. Treasury OIG and other agencies interviewed an additional twenty-eight persons. The only minority attendees identified were the Filipino and the Native American civilians who had attended previously.

1989 T-shirt
Fig. 17

The MOB and REX were instituted by this year and a DOJ employee served on the MOB, having responsibility for making sure there were enough judges for the volleyball tournament. The Redneck of the Year was a Birmingham, Alabama, police officer. A Secret Service agent was elected president of the Roundup. The official T-shirt had two good o' boys on the front: one saying he will give $75 and another saying he wants to watch. These are references to the auction the previous year where some attendees presented a female "groupie" who they said would perform oral sex on the highest bidder. A woman in the crowd, saying that her husband did not believe she was good at that sex act, offered money to be able to watch the winner receive his prize so she could learn some new techniques. [/ Rightmyer told us that although the high bidder paid the amount he bid for the offered service, the bidder never sought to have the service performed. Rightmyer claimed that the bids were all in "the spirit" of the auction which was to raise money for an ATF agent's daughter who was in a coma. ]

Virtually all the allegations of racist conduct for this year were made by Richard Hayward. In his affidavit to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Hayward alleged that he attended the Roundup for the first time in 1989 and that when he arrived at the check-in point there were:

several signs posted such as "No Niggers Allowed" and "Nigger Deposit Point." These signs remained posted during the entire event. The check-in point also had an effigy or dummy of a black person hanging from a tree. This effigy remained at the check-in point throughout the event. Moreover, BATF agents and other law enforcement officers would surround each vehicle as it approached, stop it, and rock the car while shouting "got any niggers in that car??!" and other such remarks.

Subsequently Hayward also alleged that people sold cassette tapes of racist material at the 1989 Roundup and that he had purchased one. Hayward further claimed that there was a T-shirt with a "silhouette of a black person with a large Afro running and it had a bull's eye on it." He called it the "running nigger" T-shirt.

These serious allegations were carefully explored in numerous interviews conducted by OIG and in investigations shared with OIG. We address the evidence and our findings on each allegation.